videology

Fall Out Boy’s New Song Quotes Britney Spears’s ‘Oops! … I Did It Again’ and It’s Going to Scramble Your Brain

Two years off in rock is like asking for extinction, but Fall Out Boy has never had a problem reinventing their sound to keep themselves alive. They’re back today with “Young and Menace,” the ominous first song off of their upcoming seventh (!) album, Mania (out September 15), and a video that lives up to the album’s title. While the song interpolates Britney Spears’s “Oops! … I Did It Again” for its chorus, references Nikki Sixx for no good reason, and sounds like an Infinity on High–era song that’s been struck by lightning and run through a blender, its surreal video — though equally as all over the place — does contain an unexpected message that might be painful to see.

It follows a young girl who appears to be trapped in a world overrun by unicorn-llamas that doesn’t seem nearly as endearing as Where the Wild Things Are, until she’s driven to an even more alternate reality where a Fall Out Boy concert is her only salve. Because, turns out, those creatures represent something even more monstrous: an abusive parent. Pete Wentz says the video was inspired by Elf, but his interpretation of the song makes slightly more sense: “It’s hard to rationalize rage — it’s hard to quantify anxiety … this song does neither, it embraces the wave …”

Watch Fall Out Boy’s Video for New Song ‘Young and Menace’